Full name: The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer

Author: Gary Paulsen Year: 2000 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Young adult, Fiction, Historical fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780375873058 0375873058

For a 16-year-old boy out in the world alone for the first time, every day's an education in the hard work and boredom of migrant labor; every day teaches him something more about friendship, or hunger, or profanity, or lust--always lust. He learns how a poker game, or hitching a ride, can turn deadly. He discovers the secret sadness and generosity to be found on a lonely farm in the middle of nowhere. Then he joins up with a carnival and becomes a grunt, running a ride and shilling for the geek show. He's living the hard carny life and beginning to see the world through carny eyes. He's tough. Cynical. By the end of the summer he's pretty sure he knows it all. Until he meets Ruby. Similar books: The Glass Cafe by Gary Paulsen Soldier's Heart by Gary Paulsen Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson A Corner Of The Universe by Ann M. Martin Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick So far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall Carry Me Home by Sandra Kring The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy Incantation by Alice Hoffman The Color of My Words by Lynn Joseph Nobody's Slave by Tim Vicary Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf No Crystal Stair by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson Newes from the Dead by Mary Hooper Lucky Strikes by Louis Bayard The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin